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Host Commentary: Four (Im)Possible Scenarios

The streets are quiet, and the fuel for every new political rocket comes from the noise in the squares

Nov 24, 2024 21:00 202

FAKTI.BG publishes opinions with a wide range of perspectives to encourage constructive debates.

We are willing to compromise, but others are not. Deja vu.

We draw a clear red line. Deja vu.

Let us be responsible Euro-Atlanticians. Deja vu.

This is what the bTV presenter Svetoslav Ivanov points out in his comment.

For more than two years after each new vote we hear the following mantra: "There must be a government. At any cost!". And this is deja vu.

Few see a way out of this situation and we are probably heading for the eighth election, before which there is a high probability that we will fall into a constitutional crisis. In a situation where there is no elected parliamentary speaker, the National Assembly cannot even start, and the president can spin the roulette with the mandates.

This National Assembly cannot even be dissolved before it has constituted itself. Not to mention the adoption of a budget or laws under the Recovery Plan to help the Bulgarian economy at a key moment.

However, what are the events that can break the wall of this impasse?

First, everyone withdraws their candidates for the Speaker of the Parliament and appoints new persons with the presumption that they should not be ultimate, but maximally compromise.

The likelihood of this happening is very small because of the radicalization we are witnessing right now. Rather, expect more political games and ultimatums, but the events of next week will show us whether this hypothesis is realistic or not.

Secondly, the Constitutional Court, which has a composition renewed by the presidential quota, annuls the last texts of the sixth amendments to the Constitution, which affect the powers of the president. If the president has the right to once again form a cabinet and organize elections, trust in them is likely to increase along with voter turnout.

The stalemate in which we find ourselves at the moment is also due to the controversial texts, which many lawyers warned would cause a constitutional crisis. That's exactly what's happening right now. Of course, we do not know when the SC would rule and whether it would overturn the amendments. But the probability of this happening is quite high. Whether this would change the parliamentary representation of the parties, however, is an entirely different matter. But it would at least partially eliminate doubts about the fairness of the elections.

Third, a new player is emerging on the political scene who is strong enough to consolidate a high score rather than simply fragment the already low parliamentary representation. But this can happen only at the beginning of social processes and mass dissatisfaction, which is currently lacking.

The streets are quiet, and the fuel of every new political rocket comes from the noise in the squares. In this sense, it is very unlikely that a new political project will appear now. Unless a sharp economic decline begins, causing mass discontent.

Fourth, a government under external pressure. If the main argument for the "assembly" between GERB, PP-DB and Peevski's public self-imposition was the beginning of the war in Ukraine, we are currently in a radically different situation.

In journalism and social sciences, there is a term - News Fatigue - extreme fatigue from a topic on which you have absorbed a lot of information that lasts for a long time. This fatigue is noticeable throughout the Western world, as well as inside Ukraine itself, where for the first time, according to "Gallup International" the people who want quick peace and negotiations are the majority - 52% of the population.

In addition, compromising the word "Euro-Atlanticism" from the Bulgarian politicians, plus the passivity of Bulgaria's Western allies in the fight against corruption and the judicial system, hastened this process even more in our country.